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Briefly, as a first season keeper, I did not add a box soon enough, and lost my queen. I had already removed the other queen cells not realizing there was a small swarm in a tree, and I was hoping that she was still there. I did find what I believe is a queen cell that was eaten out from the bottom, but can't find a queen in there, of course I have not yet been able to see my queen even when she was doing great. If I do have a queen, it is probably a virgin queen at this point, not really good weather since the swarm incident. Now I don't know what to do. Wait and see? Get another queen in there? My biggest frustration all along has been finding the queen. I bought a nuc and they didn't mark her.

If you have no eggs laid to raise another queen and you can not find the queen, and you have already destroyed the queen cells in the hive

Then,

You may be queenless. Simple test is to get a frame of eggs from another hive and put them into your suspected queenless hive. If they draw queen cells they are queenless. If nothing happen and they raise the brood they have a queen.

Do you have another hive to take young brood and eggs from?

If not, and you have no other beekeepers who will provide you a frame of eggs to test. I would strongly recommend getting another queen.

I do not have another hive. I do not know another beekeeper either. I guess I better order a new queen. I was told that my workers will not accept her if I have even a virgin queen in my hive. And I really stink at "queen seeing." Ugh.

Thanks all! I spoke to my local beekeeper/store guy (I'll call him T) about a frame of brood and he suggested I wait to be sure that I don't have a new virgin queen. Then, just yesterday several hundred bees were buzzing loudly about 15ft from their hive in kind of circular patterns, then landed on a tree branch for about twenty minutes, then right back to their hive. T had been talking about waiting for the possible queen to have weather enough to mate in the "mating zone." What is that about, and is it possible that this is what occured yesterday? I am going to get into the hive today and check things out. Any thoughts?